Livingston Island

sunrise 02:57, sunset 22:53

Hannah Point was on the south shore of Livingston Island. There were some interesting cliffs here. We anchored in the bay, and from the hills we had quite a good view of the ship in the bay as can be seen in a photo below. Here we saw not only the now familiar gentoo penguins but also chinstrap penguins, and an elephant seal breeding area. We even saw a couple of macaroni penguins (they have fun-looking orange eyebrows and large red beaks!) The elephant seals were on the beach closer to the water, and the penguins had to go past them to the water. But occasionally a seal would charge uphill and basically trample over the penguin nests. We saw one going up the hill, and penguins scattering, we felt so sorry for the penguins. That's nature at work I suppose. The gentoo penguin chicks were bigger here than in previous locations, but the chinstraps and macaronis were still sitting on their eggs. The penguin chicks were very soft and fluffy looking, really quite adorable. There were also sea gulls and skuas around, some of them stealing eggs from the penguins. We hiked up the hill side and over to the other side and had some dramatic views of the coastline.

About midday, the ship took up to the next island Aitcho in the Aitcho group. These are volcanic islands. and we took a hike to the far end of the island to get a view of the surrounding islands and waters. We also got to see some more elephant seals. The male was quite a lot larger than the females, and we got to see them pretty close-up. There ware also some interesting errosion and rock formations here.

This was our last stop in the Antarctic area. We would be heading back into Drake Passage soon. It was an introduction to the beautiful white continent. I don't know if the photos did much justice to convey its beauty. Some of the key thoughts I had about the Antarctic:

• Everything here happens on a large scale, icebergs, number of penguins, size of the sky! Yeah, some places do have bigger skies than others. Ah, and the skies here had no contrails, no sign of airplanes flying overhead. Long daylight hours were not good for star watching, and the stars were unfamiliar.
• The waters around the continent which we saw were really calm, and even I did not get seasick other than at the Drake Passage
• The temperature was around 32F the whole time, not really cold. Of course we did not go into the interior of the continent where it may be different.
• The place has immense natural beauty, very little signs of human activity. I hope it stays that way.
• Penguins were really amazing birds and fun to watch
• I wish we could have seen more whales
• The stories of the Antarctic exploration were amazing examples of human courage and fascinating
• There were more to see, and a trip to South Georgia to see the king penguins would be great.